You Shouldn't Train All-Out, All the Time
Training productively and progressively is a balancing act between too little and too much stress on the body. Too little training stress and you won’t make any progress. Too much and you risk low motivation, burnout, injury, and if you let it go on long enough, overtaining.
If you’re training hard for a sport, race, academy, or other hard task, you should periodically include “low stress” weeks. These have often been called “deload” weeks, but I don’t necessarily like that term.
“Deload” implies “light.” You don’t want your low stress week’s strength training to be particularly light unless you just completed an important competition. In that situation, your body and mind could probably use a break, and it’s ok to take a week of light training to allow yourself to rest. Likewise, you don’t want your conditioning to be easy and mindless.
If you’re in the middle of normal training or ramping up for an event, going too light or easy can be detrimental. Fitness gains can regress more quickly than you think. You don’t want to spend weeks and weeks building your fitness only to let a little of it go during a “deload.” I’m greedy, I want to keep every little bit I’ve gained.
The purpose of a low stress week is to allow built-up fatigue to dissipate so productive training can continue. You should come out of a low stress week stronger and faster than you were before. It shouldn’t take you a few workouts to break back in and you shouldn’t be any more sore than normal when you get back to regular training. In my experience, drastic “deloads” with very light loads leave me more susceptible to getting sore when I train with my normal volume the next week.
I like to maintain intensity during low stress weeks. I don’t reduce the weight on the bar or the pace of conditioning. Instead, I reduce volume. The amount of volume reduction needed will vary from individual to individual, but I usually start with a 50-60% reduction and see how that works for them. So if you normally do 5 sets of an exercise, do 2-3 sets. If you normally do 10 repetitions of an interval training workout, do about 5 reps. For longer endurance workouts, reduce the total time (you may not need a 60% reduction in this case, less may be ok). You get the idea. This will allow for recovery while maintaining fitness.
The frequency of low stress weeks will vary based on your experience. The newer you are to training, the less frequently you’ll probably need to take a low stress week. You just aren’t able to wreck yourself through training like someone who has many years of experience under their belt. I recommend you train steadily and consistently for as long as possible, and take low stress weeks only while traveling or when your schedule doesn’t allow you to get in the gym as much as normal.
If you’ve got a few years of experience in the gym, you might need a low stress week every 4-8 weeks. You can go shorter or longer, you know your abilities better than I do. I personally use a low stress week about every 6-8 weeks. Like with most things, experiment and see what works best to allow you to train hard, make progress, and not be completely wrecked all the time.
If you’re looking for a fitness trainer in the Mt Juliet/Hermitage/Nashville TN area, online fitness training, or just need some advice to get your fitness program started, contact me